GP Austria, gara–21/06/2015

Nico Rosberg closed the gap on Mercedes team-mate and Formula 1 world championship leader Lewis Hamilton to 10 points with a dominant victory in the Austrian Grand Prix.

The German dived down the inside of pole-sitter Hamilton at Turn 1 to snatch the lead and despite suffering tyre vibrations in the closing stages he held on to take his third win of the year.

Hamilton, who had five seconds added to his race time for crossing the white line at the pitlane exit, finished second with Williams’s Felipe Massa scoring his first podium of the year in third after Sebastian Vettel was delayed at his pitstop.

The safety car was called into action on the first lap when Fernando Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen made contact, sending both into the barriers and out of the race.

It looked like the Finn had a big tank-slapper on the exit of Turn 2 and when the car snapped back to outside, Alonso had nowhere to go, vaulting the Ferrari as they came to rest against the outside barrier.

Both drivers walked away from the incident, with Alonso heading to the medical centre for a precautionary check before returning to the paddock.

With Alonso’s updated car out, the weekend then got worse for McLaren a few laps later when Jenson Button retired for the second race in succession.

In the battle for fifth, Valtteri Bottas had to pass Force India’s Nico Hulkenberg twice after losing out during the pitstops.

Lotus’s Pastor Maldonado took his second successive points finish when snatched seventh from Max Verstappen on the penultimate lap.

Maldonado nearly lost control on the start/finish straight as Verstappen defended the inside line, but he got the position when the Toro Rosso locked up and went wide at Turn 1.

The other Toro Rosso of Carlos Sainz was running in the points early on as he banged wheels with the Lotus of Romain Grosjean before passing the Frenchman to take ninth.

But he picked up a five-second time penalty for speeding in the pitlane and then pulled into the pits to retire with a loss of power.

Grosjean’s race didn’t last much longer as he ran off track onto the grass before reporting a problem with the gearbox and retiring.

Sergio Perez recovered from a difficult qualifying to give Force India its first double-points finish since the season-opening race in Australia with ninth.

Daniel Ricciardo salvaged a point for Red Bull at its home race with 10th, passing Sauber’s Felipe Nasr in the closing stages.

Nasr crossed the line 11th, with the second Red Bull of Daniil Kvyat, who like his team-mate Ricciardo had a grid penalty for an engine change, was 12th.

Marcus Ericsson had a troubled afternoon, first picking up a drive-through penalty for jumping the start and then losing around 15 seconds when he stopped on the start finish straight and had to do a full system reset before getting going again.

Manor’s Roberto Merhi was the last of the finishers in 14th, the best finish of his F1 career, while his team-mate Will Stevens retired for the first time this season with a suspected oil leak.